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Chapter 4: Forest Management
The science of sustainable forest management is called
silviculture
.
Silvi
comes from
the Latin term for forest. Picking the sustainable approach can help foresters and
landowners manage the resources in the forest, which can provide income for years
to come, protect the ecosystems in the forest, and maintain a habitat for plant and
animal life for the future.
Clear-Cutting—Not Always So Clear-Cut
The term
clear-cutting
is somewhat unclear. Often the term is confused with
deforestation
, and two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. For this reason,
clear-cutting is at times assumed to be completely negative. But, in fact, clear-
cutting is a viable tactic used by silviculturists to harvesting timber from a forest.
(Deforestation, which will be discussed later, is another issue.)
In the 1800s and early 1900s, clear-cutting in North America was the practice of
cutting down all the trees in an area that could be used in a sawmill. This was typically
the larger, old-growth timber. Clear-cutting at that time was done for economic
Clear-cutting in the Great Lakes region, circa 1965.